I have been putting off reviewing the whole arsenal of games I have, I only recently bother to put this game onto my Steam, despite being part of those people that helped the Kickstarter. As I have watched this evolution of a game I was fascinated by the update, but I'll get to that.

I recall first loading the game up one summer, and just sat there with my ears wide open listening to the music, this was a time I had never touched this type of music, and I was immediately engrossed, from that moment, I was ready to embrace the game with wide open arms, which is the reason why I have probably commited over 100 hours to this game, and unfortunately hit a decline after getting it on Steam, but yet again I'll get there.

The original "vanilla" game was interesting and the patches certainly improved the game and added the playability, out of all the indie games I played in those games, this already reached a high point in my collection of indie games (one day my laptop crashed because of too many games so trust me when I say it was huge).

Now talking about the style of game, it is a bit of rogue-like space game, with an overhead view of your ship, this ship is highly changeable in the sense of what it looks like, as you unlock more ships, however, completing the game once will not provide you with all those ships, and requires re-play in order to go certain scenarios, all of which is pretty exact to get it done, (if you're struggling I'm sure there is a guide online somewhere) the unique abilities of these ships are usually do not hinder you're performance late game, as the late game is strategic rather than a spam click, (please make good use of that pause button, I beg you).

Next up, your crew, I can't talk much about this other than the fact they are very varied and give an edge to the game and can enhance, and dehance? (can't think of a better word) your game, very creative though.

Graphics wise, solid, almost unblemished, I used to see bugs, but we are talking really early days here, and now I haven't heard nor seen anything bad so I'm going to say it's solid, its style very well suits the type of game, and I give kudos and agree, they really couldn't of made it better.

Now, the only thing that irks me. The update. I can already hear the mass groups of people banging on my door demanding I take that comment back. But I'm assuming they will listen to reason. The update wasn't needed, FTL, really didn't need an expansion, in fact, those very little hours I have on the game was all I could handle of the new update, maybe I just don't like change (probably that), or maybe I just dislike the changes that take it away from what it used to be, for me this being a small indie game was its charm, indie games don't usually update like this, and maybe the indie charm was lost on me, but to be honest it isn't that bad, I just really dislike the changes, and the vanilla game seemed to appeal to me better, maybe nostalgia, but who knows, I'm not going to see a therapist about it, enough about that I'm going to move on before I start ranting, which would be very bad wouldn't it?

In terms of whether or not you should do the tutorial, don't, just don't. Part of the best experience of this game is learning how to use it, its a bit like riding a bike, learning it the way you do means you don't forget it, and FTL really requires you to utilise your knowledge, I find being thrown in and not knowing what you are doing is really part of the charm, and makes you play it for longer, (says the guy who wasted over 100 hours on this game), if you are really struggling, I'd advise watching someone play it, if you still don't get it, fine do the tutorial.

Next, gameplay and replayability, the gameplay is too immersive, I swear to God here. When I say when I got the game I played it for 9 hours straight, I mean it, it has that kind of "just one more turn" feature that Civ has, except you are too busy dying a lot to really notice that, and you'll hate yourself for killing your crew, ah James the human, you will be missed... Anyway, replayability, it is a bit of a "meh", the 100 hours came really from playing each ship, after that, it's a tad boring to be honest, but for a game that costs as little as it does it is more than worth it, considering it is a fraction of the cost of Call of Battlefield or whatever it is called that gets pumped out every year, while looking exactly the same, and a tiny change of scenery, that capitalises on a 10 year old kid wanting to be popular at school (well that is my assumption on how it works), but anyway I'm getting off topic, FTL, is among one of the best games I've ever played, sure I don't like the update, but you can turn it off in game which is such a saving grace for me.

To conclude, a fine piece of indie beauty, sure don't h8 apprec8 this game, it is a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ sight further than Call of Duty's recent installment of "Shoot some peeps online and scream in your mic as annoying as possible", and I would MUCH RATHER play the update of this then touch that kind of FPS. So in a condensed version: Amazing, totally would get, but advise playing without the update once in a while, and on that bombshell...

9/10- Good but so very close to absolute perfectionSorry for bad English, I'm not fluent, if you have any questions, please add me and I am perfectly willing to answer them, now good night and have fun!

A lot of hardcore players, but I figured I'd give it a review on the more casual side of things. All I have to say is: it is not easy, but if sure as fun as hell. I don't even care for this genre. Works fine on Linux Mint from my experience. Recommended!

(That being said, I suppose I should say why in order to convince any sceptics, eh?)

Let me jump right into the deep end then: Being captain on a spaceship is a demanding and difficult task. It's not for the faint hearted and not at all as easy as James T. Kirk made it look all those years ago or even more recently after an obvious cloning error gave him bushier eyebrows. Skippering a starship is hard work. Even with a high-end gaming PC as your tool of choice, it's the multitasking that gets you down.

At any one moment you could be timing the charge of your Glaive Beam with the release of an Ion Charger burst because an enemy ship has hacked your own hacking subsystem and you can't take down their shields for another ten seconds.

At that very same moment you might be waiting for a new defense drone to become available and fearing the next missile strike on your oxygen bay, while one crewmember attempts to restore full functionality to your drone bay subsystem so that you can send across a boarding drone in the meantime.

Fires could be raging in the engine room from the last laser strike because a missile took down your own shields thirty seconds ago. The crew members that were fighting the fire would still in the clone queue, however, and you've just opted to vent that section of the ship to open space in order to maintain some evasion capabilities.

Did I mention that a fierce fight to the death will be going on in the cockpit against two boarders determined to take down the best pilot the galaxy has ever seen? No? Well that's happening at the very same second as all the other stuff. Too bad for you.

The battery charger is recharging, of course, so you are also having to juggle reactor resources like crazy to keep everything running so that the Glaive Beam keeps on charging uninterrupted and you can get that defense drone up in a timely manner. Which means now, please!

Just when you think you're being hopelessly overwhelmed, one of two things can happen. You will all die. Or...or (and this is the good part) the wounded boarders will beam back to their ship, your engine room fires extinguishing themselves; the defense drone will come online with one second to spare before the next incoming missile, and the Glaive Beam reach 95% charge allowing you to release a burst of ion projectiles and temporarily redirect that reactor energy to your oxygen pumps.

You watch the enemy shields go down in quick succession, for once allowing you to release the full charge of your terrifying beam weapon across four critical enemy subsystems. Their shields go into the red, their hacking subsystem is out of action, their own oxygen is gone, and their engines screech to a halt.

You can relax. You might have only yellow dots remaining on your ship's health bar, but the battle is already won. You just wait for the Glaive Beam to recharge one more time, while the newly cloned crew members (complete with bushy eyebrows of their own) go around the ship fixing everything, and your defense drone cheerily drops every incoming missile.

Wow! Being a spaceship captain is a cinch after all. Easy. A doddle. Nothing to write a review about.

I scream into Intercom: "God damm transfer that energy from medbay into SHIELDS! And someone put out that fire on deck finally."

Oh best space ship commander experience ever, and you do not need next-next-super-gen graphic for feel it. This game has an amazing ability to took you on voyage to save your civilazation ... and forms you into captain, who boldly goes where no man has gone before !!